Chapter 3 - THE LEDGER BURIED WITH HER MOTHER
At 1:17 a.m., someone cut the electricity to the safe house.
Elias was already moving before the lights disappeared.
“Stay behind me.”
Adeline heard weapons being drawn in the darkness.
Emergency lights flickered red along the hallway.
One of Elias’s men entered.
“Boss, perimeter camera three is down.”
“Four?”
“Gone.”
“West stairwell?”
“Movement.”
Elias turned to Adeline.
“Shoes.”
“What?”
“You’re wearing heels.”
She looked down.
“Take them off.”
“This is a terrible time to criticize my wardrobe.”
“Adeline.”
She kicked them off.
Elias led her through a concealed door behind the library.
A narrow concrete staircase descended beneath the building.
“Where does this go?”
“Garage across the street.”
“You really have secret tunnels?”
“I prefer emergency exits.”
“That is a secret tunnel.”
A gunshot echoed above them.
Adeline stopped.
Elias caught her wrist.
“Move.”
They emerged inside an underground garage.
A black sedan waited with its engine running.
Marco DeLuca, Elias’s security chief, stood beside it.
“They breached the east entrance.”
“Casualties?”
“Two injured. No deaths.”
“Vincent?”
“Missing.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
They drove toward Manhattan.
Adeline sat silently until Elias handed her a photograph.
Claire Marsh stood beside Elias’s father, Roberto Ferrante.
Between them was a metal accounting box.
On the back, someone had written:
APRIL 3, 2002 — THE LAST CLEAN LEDGER.
“What does that mean?” Adeline asked.
Elias studied the picture.
“My father kept two kinds of books.”
“Legal and illegal?”
“Official and private.”
“That sounds like legal and illegal with nicer vocabulary.”
His mouth almost moved.
“Probably.”
She looked again.
Her mother appeared nervous in the photograph.
“What happened on April third?”
Marco answered from the front.
“Thirty-two million dollars disappeared from Ferrante accounts.”
Adeline looked at Elias.
“And Vincent was accused?”
“Privately.”
“What happened?”
“My father dropped the investigation.”
“Why?”
“No one knows.”
The sedan entered a private parking garage beneath Ferrante Tower.
Elias led Adeline upstairs to his office.
Marco arrived ten minutes later carrying a dusty cardboard file box.
“We found this in the old archive.”
Inside were Claire’s employment records.
Photographs.
Expense reports.
And a handwritten note.
Adeline recognized her mother’s handwriting instantly.
If anything happens to me, Adeline must never know what I found until Roberto's son is strong enough to survive the truth.
Elias stared at the sentence.
“Roberto’s son.”
“You.”
He unfolded another page.
A list of account numbers.
Beside each was the same set of initials.
V.A.
Vincent Aldridge.
Then Adeline found an envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
Inside was a small brass key.
And a note.
Addie, if you ever receive this, I failed to come home.
Adeline stopped.
Her vision blurred.
Elias quietly took the letter when she could no longer hold it steady.
He continued reading.
The proof is somewhere nobody in the Ferrante family would willingly look.
Beneath Roberto’s first grave.
Elias froze.
Adeline wiped her eyes.
“First grave?”
“My father was buried once.”
She stared at him.
“Once?”
“His body was moved six years later after the family mausoleum was built.”
Adeline looked at the brass key.
“So something may still be buried there.”
Elias nodded.
Marco suddenly cleared his throat.
“There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“The original cemetery records show somebody accessed Roberto’s first grave three days ago.”
Elias looked at him sharply.
“Who?”
Marco turned the tablet around.
Security footage showed an elderly man walking between the graves.
Vincent Aldridge.
But he had not been alone.
A younger woman followed him.
Adeline stared at the screen.
She recognized her immediately.
“No.”
Elias looked at her.
“You know her?”
Adeline’s face drained of color.
“That’s my aunt Caroline.”
“The woman who raised you after your mother died?”
“Yes.”
Elias studied the footage.
May you like
Adeline whispered:
“She told me she’d never heard the name Ferrante in her life.”
